The Dirty Streets of Heaven

fourteen

Eligor’s long, icy fingers wrapped my head. Again I was in the presence of something that could tear my mortal body apart like bread dough, but this time it had already caught me. The founder of Vald Credit lifted me at arm’s length until my feet were kicking several inches above the floor and my neck felt like chewed taffy.

“Go ahead,” I told him, determined not to go out begging. It probably sounded a lot like Grrruhrhrdd, since his hand was crushing my features into a shape they weren’t meant to take. “Kill me.” Krrrmrr.

“Oh, definitely. Sooner rather than later.” He smiled. There were sharp things in his mouth that didn’t even look remotely like teeth. “But first, I’m going to call up a couple of hard, pipe-hittin’ Nergalis and we’re going to go to work on you until we find out who you are and why you came storming into my office with this Magian Society bullshit.”

Still dangling me in mid-air like a prize trout he muted his glamour and shrank back to looking like Kenneth Vald once more, but his eyes remained distinctly goatlike, pus-yellow with horizontal slots for pupils. This was about as bad as things could get. Eligor may not have been Old Scratch himself, but he was high in the Hellish nobility, with strength and abilities to match. They don’t really have a firm hierarchy down there, but I couldn’t kid myself-he was a member of the All-Star Team and I was one of Heaven’s lowliest bench-warmers.

The demon lord fluttered the fingers of his free hand and the nearer office door abruptly sprang open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a half-dozen or more armed guards dressed like SWAT commandos tumble through and into the office. One was so surprised by the door’s sudden unlocking that as he fell he discharged his M4 with a deafening rattle. Bits of ceiling rained down around us for several seconds as the guards scrambled to their feet and surrounded me with a ring of automatic weapons, although it scarcely seemed necessary since I was still hanging helplessly in midair and no threat to anything except my own dry underwear.

Several of the plainclothes security guys shoved in after the armored men. The leader of these had his gun in one hand and a phone in the other. It was Howlingfell. “Boss,” he said, “-I mean Your Grace-we got a problem!”

“I’ve got the problem right here,” said Eligor, bouncing me gently up and down. I swear I could hear my neck vertebrae popping like popcorn. “I want you to get me some of those nasty Shahr-e Sukhteh fuckers who like to play with needles and fire. We’re going to find out who this little winged rat is and who sent him.”

“Oh, shit,” said Howlingfell. “I think I know that guy.” He pushed his way through the ring of guards and got right up in my face, standing on tiptoes so he could examine me as I struggled in Eligor’s unbreakable grip. Even in his human body he was no prize: not only was he ugly, he had breath like rotting dog food. After a moment he showed his teeth in a tongue-lolling grin. “Yeah, that’s Bobby Dollar. I met him a coupla times-he’s one of those advocates.” If he remembered me, I was pretty sure he also remembered my foot on his windpipe.

I smiled back, then spat at him, hoping he might go for me despite his boss’s presence and accidentally kill me (this definitely seemed like one of those situations where dying had to be better than the alternative) but although the gob of spittle landed on his cheek, Howly never had the chance to do anything but step back, because suddenly Eligor roared like a wounded lion and flung me to the ground.

“Bobby Dollar?” his master bellowed. “You mean this is Doloriel? The little pimp who stole from me?”

This shit was just getting worse and worse. So that thing I was supposed to have (but didn’t actually possess) belonged to one of the Grand Dukes of Hell? To the same archdemon who had just captured me with the ease of a man scooping up an escaped hamster and had decided to set some sadistic Middle Eastern demons on me before he even knew who I was? This was just fucking peachy.

“Tell me where it is, punk. Right now.” Eligor leaned down and yanked me back into the air, this time with hands clamped on each arm, and held me in front of his face. He smelled a lot better than Howlingfell, but for a moment I could see into the endless abyss behind those black-slot eyes, and it nearly stopped my heart. Eligor wasn’t Hell’s only grand duke, but there aren’t many and they are all horrifyingly dangerous. Like the stupid dick I am, I had started a bar fight with a stranger who turned out to be a World Heavyweight Champ. “If you tell me right now,” he said, “maybe I’ll just peel your face off and let you live like that for a while, chained to my desk.”

“I c-can bring it to you. I swear I can-if you let me go. Otherwise you don’t get shit out of me.”

“Oh, I’ll get everything out of you, you little winged pimple.” The demon lord was having trouble keeping his Kenneth Vald face on: it was rippling as if it might get too hot and just melt away. The experience was a bit like sitting in the control room of a nuclear power plant in mid-disaster-fascinating in that you only get to watch something like that once in your life, and it’s probably also going to be the last thing you’ll ever see. “Sweat, blood, shit, and piss to begin with,” Eligor snarled, “-oh, a lot of blood. Then eventually every cell of your body will slowly be turned into liquid and squeezed out onto the floor of my recreation room.” He dropped me again. I fell hard but managed to crawl back up onto my knees. Might as well die with my head above floor level, I figured. (Don’t ask me why-it just seemed better somehow.)

“But, Master,” said Howlingfell, “you can’t-I mean, not now!”

Vald/Eligor turned toward him, head pivoting slowly like a king cobra gauging optimum striking distance. “I can’t…?”

Howlingfell went pale and began squirming. I thought he was going to throw himself to the floor beside me and show Eligor his belly. “No, it’s because of the cops! There’s about forty of them down in the lobby.” He waved his phone. “They said there’s a fugitive up here-they must have meant this Dollar guy. He’s wanted for murdering Grasswax, the prosecutor-I mean Grazuvac. They were afraid he might have taken you hostage. It was all I could do to get them to wait five minutes and let me and my men check things out!”

Eligor snorted. “Cocksuckers. As if some minor-leaguer’s going to…” He shook his head in irritation. “Look, just tell them we killed the little shit already, and they can come pick up the body pretty soon. That’ll give us time to-”

Astonishingly, Howlingfell interrupted. He had bigger balls than I thought, although judging by the look on Eligor’s face he might not have them for long. “But it’s been more than five minutes, Master. They’re already on the way up. Talk to the guy in charge of them, Your Grace-he won’t listen to me!”

“Give me that fucking phone.” Eligor reached out and snatched it from Howlingfell’s hand. “Is someone there? This is Kenneth Vald speaking. Officer, I don’t know who you are, but I demand you contact Deputy Chief Bryant and he’ll tell you…” He paused for a moment. “Bryant? That’s you? What the hell is going on? How dare you enter my building without…” There was another kind of anger in his voice now and, for at least this moment, he had forgotten about me. I stared blearily around the room but didn’t see any immediate hope of escape. My revolver, which might or might not have been empty, had fallen to the ground when the Grand Duke grabbed me, then had been kicked aside somewhere by one of his guards. Unlike the window in the outer office, the one in here was still whole, and without a gun I had doubts I could break the safety glass, even if I could somehow get through the ring of guards pointing their assault rifles at me.

“What do you mean you’re outranked? I don’t care!” Duke Eligor was beginning to look a bit bothered: his hair and whiskers were still the same pale, pale gold, but his skin had gone the color of new brick. “Well, screw you and your higher authority, Bryant! I’m going to cut the little bastard to pieces, and you can have what’s left when you get there. So? I don’t care if this is a public frequency! Anyway, who’s even going to know if you tell them the guy was already…” He frowned, listening, then pointed at Howlingfell. “Go look out the window.”

The minion went to the window. “What do you want to know?”

“Are there guys with sniper rifles and cameras on the roof of the Courier Building?” Eligor asked. “Looking in the window here?”

“Yes, Master,” Howlingfell said. “A lot of them. Do I have to keep standing here? What if they think I’m him?”

Eligor raised the phone again. “Who did this shit to me, Bryant? Because that’s a pretty damn big coincidence. I want a name.” His slotted eyes narrowed. “Oh, really? All right, you can take the suspect. Bring your men in and I’ll have my boys stand down.” He clicked off the phone and turned to Howlingfell. His expression could have removed paint from a battleship hull. “We’re going to let them have him. Too much shit to clean up, otherwise.”

Howlingfell scuttled over. As he dragged me up off the floor he gave my arm a not-too-friendly squeeze just to let me know he remembered our previous meeting. I swear the bones squeaked as they rubbed together. “But if you want to question him, Master, can’t we just take him Outside? Then you’ll have all the time you want. As long as he’s alive and still breathing when we turn him over to the cops….”

Eligor cursed, or at least that’s what I assume he did. I couldn’t understand the words, but at the sound of his sharp exclamation a wind suddenly rose that made the windows shudder and several of the papers on his long teak desk caught fire. “Did I advertise for stupid? Because that’s the only way you could have been the top candidate.” He glared. Howlingfell cringed. “You can’t take one of our kind out of Time unwillingly without turning the whole apple cart upside down. That’s a major breach of the Conventions-it’ll set off alarms from the top floor of Creation down to the basement, alert his overlords and mine, and probably start a war. Do you think that’s a good idea, you fucking idiot? Do you?”

“No, Master!”

I would have sworn the security chief was about to urinate submissively.

“And you, angel,” said Eligor, turning to me. “Don’t think you’re safe even with the police. You can guess how many friends we’ve got in prison.” He laughed, but he sure didn’t sound happy. “You’ve got something of mine and not only am I going to get it back, you’re going to suffer like you never even imagined suffering. You thought you could treat Eligor the Horseman like some kind of street bitch, did you? I’ll see you again…real soon.”

And before I could even reply to any of his charming promises he kicked me in the balls and then in the head as I crumpled forward, sending me somewhere that even angels go if you hit them hard enough.

I won’t bore you with the details of being dragged across the San Judas Hall of Justice parking garage, half-stupefied, handcuffed, and throbbing painfully between my legs, then being tossed into a holding cell to wait, bruised and bloody, without benefit of either a lawyer or medical attention. Stronger than normal body or not, I was in a world of serious hurt. About half an hour later, when I was able to sit upright on my own without puking, two SJPD officers came and led me to the booking desk. The cops there might as well have been processing a shadow-they barely looked at me, spoke to me only enough to direct me through the required photos and fingerprinting, then dumped me back into the holding tank. It was odd that I had a cell to myself in the middle of the day when the San Judas County Correctional System was so notoriously overcrowded. It was also strange that someone being arrested for a newsworthy murder should have been walked into the Hall of Justice without a single reporter present, especially when a police tactical squad had been staked out on the roof of the San Judas Courier, a building full of journalists, while everything went down right in front of them in the penthouse office of one of the richest men in America.

At first I had been relieved just to be alive and out of Five Page Mill Square, but I was beginning to wonder if I had simply been helped out of the frying pan and into something a little warmer. Not to mention that my groin and my head still ached so miserably from Eligor kicking me that it felt like the best possible solution would be separating the two wounded areas as far as possible, by decapitation. I banged on the door and demanded a lawyer or a telephone call (of course they’d confiscated my phone) but was thoroughly ignored.

At last, just when I was imagining they’d have to feed me something soon and wondering if I could hold it down, a quartet of cops in full riot gear came in to get me. Somebody had apparently decided I was dangerous, which was precisely why I went with them like the sweetest lamb you ever saw. Never do anything expected is my motto, especially when you don’t know how much trouble you’re in, which I didn’t, except I knew there was a lot of it. Eligor, one of the Opposition’s major beasts, thought I’d been stealing from him, and somebody with even more clout than Eligor had just had me arrested. Oh, and in case I didn’t explain earlier, those Zippers we angels use don’t lead anywhere except out of normal time., so you’re still in the same place. I wasn’t getting out of jail that way.

The cops led me across the facility to a part I’d never seen before. (Yes, I’ve been in the Hall of Justice a time or two. “None of your business” is the next answer.) It was an interrogation room, but although there was a single heavy steel table bolted to the floor in the center, there were no two-way mirrors for observation, nor, in fact, anything on the walls at all except an old poster about how to perform CPR. The walls themselves were chipped and pitted, the paint scraped away in spots by what might have been fingernails, which didn’t bear much thinking about. I decided a few off-the-record interrogations might have taken place there back in the day, or maybe even earlier that week, and my stomach began to curl up into a hard knot. I was wordlessly directed to a folding chair on one side of the metal table, then the cops retired to the back wall, inscrutable as robots in their plexiglas face masks and helmets, and for about three or four minutes we all just waited in silence. I spent the time imagining impressive ways to escape, but I knew that none of them would work. I’m pretty tough but I’m not going to beat four cops with body-armor, tasers, and batons if they’ve had any training, especially not after the punishing way Kenny Vald and the ghallu had knocked me around recently.

Suddenly the door opened and the cops all straightened a bit, although they had been pretty much at attention already. The tall, dark-haired woman who walked in was not someone I immediately recognized, though she had one of those semi-familiar faces I felt I ought to know. She was maybe in her early fifties, wore a very boring, very serious dark business suit, and had a handsome, intelligent face with a strong nose.

“Robert Dollar?” she asked, looking down at a sheaf of papers in her hand, then up at me, as if I was different than what she’d expected.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “At your service.”

“Spare me anything cute, Mr. Dollar.” She slid into the chair across from me, then handed me a package of wet wipes. “Clean yourself up. I’m Congresswoman Jennifer Taccone. And you are a lucky man.”

“Tell that to my scrotum, Representative,” I said. My face was stinging as I wiped away the dried blood, and I was tired of playing Mary’s little lamb. “Because the bastard on the top floor of the Vald building kicked me there pretty hard, and no matter what any of his thugs or the SJPD said I didn’t do anything wrong.” Unless you objected to killing demons, of course, but I was relying on Eligor to clean up the mess I’d made of his secretary. He didn’t want publicity, and he didn’t want me in jail. He’d made it clear he had more personal plans for me.

“I hope that’s true, Mr. Dollar,” she said. “Because somebody has gone very, very far out on a limb for you. You are no longer just an ordinary smart-mouthed irritation, you have become an extremely high-priced favor-the biggest I’ve ever done.”

Who had that kind of clout? A sudden thought made my stomach flip-flop. “You’re not handing me back to Kenneth Vald, are you?”

A cold stare. “Mr. Vald is no longer involved with this matter. And in a moment I won’t be, either.”

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s good, too,” the congresswoman said, “because after you leave here you’re going to completely forget any of this ever happened…and that most definitely includes this little chat.” She shot me a hard, unpleasant look. “You and I have never met. Remember that.”

“I’m leaving?”

“When I walk out of this room the guards will walk out behind me, Mr. Dollar. You will then wait until you have counted to at least one hundred before you follow. The door will be unlocked. If you turn left and walk to the elevator it will take you down to the employee parking garage. There are a number of exits from there. Once you leave this property, I will no longer know or care what happens to you. Clear?”

I was beginning to remember more things about Congresswoman Taccone now, and one of them was that she wasn’t just an ordinary politician. She had seats on some of the most important committees in Washington, and if the Democrats got back in control she was the horse some people were backing to finish in the money, either as House Whip or even Speaker. All of which made me wonder: who had the muscle to bend her?

Still, only an idiot would have been counting the teeth on this particular gift horse. “All clear,” I told her. “Thank you, Ma’am. Thank you very much.”

“Right.” She pushed my phone and my empty revolver across the table to me. “Then our business is done.” As I holstered my gun and slipped the phone into my pocket she stood and gave the cops behind me a look. They shuffled past me, all that gear rattling as they followed her out the door.

Well, I thought, this is definitely some weird, weird shit. I counted to a hundred and then headed for the door, half-expecting to find it locked and the whole thing some bizarre infernal prank, a bit of morale-stomping before they got down to interrogating me properly, but the door was open and the hallway outside deserted. I tried to look as much like an unhurried and innocent person as I could, but it didn’t seem to matter. The couple of other civic employees I encountered barely glanced at me, although I must have looked like I’d lost a fight against a guy with a snow shovel.

Same thing in the garage-cars rolled past me without the drivers even looking hard, a parade of stolid looking cop-types in their civilian rides, SUVs and sedans that looked like unmarked police cars. Instead of coming out on Broadway I went up the stairs on the Marshall Street side. It was dark, the lamps hung with Carnival bunting for the upcoming parade, the streets busy with people leaving work, but I still hoped I could find a cab without having to stand around too long in the open-I was very conscious that my gun had no bullets in it. As soon as I reached the curb, though, a long, black car pulled up alongside me, and the passenger-side window slid down. The passenger seat was empty. Nervous, as you can well imagine, I leaned down to peer into the dark interior and saw a shadow behind the wheel and a hint of hair as pale and shiny as Karael’s armor.

“You are very predictable, Mr. Dollar,” the Countess said from the driver’s seat. “I suggest you climb in before someone notices you. No-the back, not the front.”

“So what are you doing here?” I asked when we were rolling. “You always troll outside the Justice building looking to pick up newly released criminals?”

“Who do you think got you released, you idiot?” This wasn’t anything like the last time we met, when I could briefly convince myself that she could sort of tolerate me, if not actually like me. “I called in my biggest favor. For you. And I’m regretting it already.”

“Whoa-you were the one who called in the Congresswoman? How do you know someone like her?”

“From law school.” She kept her eyes on the road.

“You were in law school?”

She made a hissing noise. “No, fool, I just like students. I told you.”

I let this slide. “So why did you do it? You don’t owe me anything. And what is this thing everyone thinks I have?”

“You don’t need to know the answer to either of those. In fact, you’re better off not knowing, so instead of asking me rude questions like the little pretend-gumshoe you think you are, you might just thank me for keeping you from being turned into a flesh-and-blood accordion like our friend Grasswax and leave it at that.”

“Hey, sister, he wasn’t any friend of mine.”

“You’re right about that, Dollar, because he landed you right in the shit.” She turned onto Jefferson. It was strange to see her driving her own car. “In fact, I’ll give you one for free-something that even Chancellor Urgulap and his inquisition don’t know. Grasswax was the one who ratted you out. He was the one who told Eligor that you had the thing Eligor wants.”

“That bastard! That gill-faced bastard! I don’t even know what the damn thing is-why would Grasswax blame it on me?”

“Oh, maybe because they were pulling all his guts and wiring out at the time, and it really hurt, and he thought if he gave them a name they might stop.” She slowed as she approached a red light. I was watching out the rear window now, my eyes open for anyone who might be following us. “Maybe because he didn’t think anyone would miss you, and he already hated your guts because you screwed him in a case the day before?”

“Shit, I didn’t have anything to do with that!” I had a sudden thought. “Hey, why are you driving? Where’s Sweetie and Honeybuns?”

“If you’re talking about my bodyguards, the situation is going to be a little different from now on,” she said. “For me as well as for you. Because things around here have gone very seriously pear-shaped. Where are you staying?”

“Huh? I don’t know. I need to find someplace. Can you take me back to get my car? I left it across the street from Page Mill Square…”

She turned and gave me a hard stare. With the streetlights gleaming behind her pale golden hair she looked like a pissed-off Piero della Francesca portrait. “If you think I’m going anywhere near there you’re dumber than I thought you were, Dollar, and I don’t think that’s theologically possible.”

“Shit. Okay, turn around, then, and take me down Veterans. I’ll grab a room in the Holiday Inn or something. I’ll get my car back tomorrow.” I slumped back in my seat, overwhelmed and exhausted. “So if Grasswax got me into all this, I still don’t understand why it’s you getting me out of it, Countess. I mean, I know I’m charming and handsome and everything, but…”

“Spare me your bullshit, Dollar.” She turned right, then at the next block turned right again. “I have my reasons, and none of them have anything to do with your meaning anything to anyone.”

“Okay, Countess…no, Casimira. That’s your name, right? Okay, like you said, no more bullshit. I think the person who needs to do the explaining now is you. Because not only don’t you and I work for the same side, we’re deadly enemies. Stay with me now. Somebody stole something from Eligor, right? And the Grand Duke or whatever he’s called, he’s not happy. He thinks it’s Grasswax the prosecutor who did it, and so Eligor and his boys pull a bunch of stuff out of Grasswax that’s not supposed to be removed-at least not without anesthetic-and then the late advocate tells them he doesn’t have this whatever-it-is, he gave it to me. Which is an absolute lie because I’ve never had it and don’t even know what it’s supposed to be. But why should any of that matter to you, Casimira?” I was talking to the back of her head so I couldn’t tell if I was accomplishing anything. “No, I’m going to call you ‘Caz’ because it’s shorter-like my temper’s getting. Go ahead, Caz, tell me why Miss Cold Hands, Cold Heart is helping out an angel who even most of the other angels don’t like very much?”

I waited out the silence. At last she turned onto Veterans Boulevard, a mess of neon and cookie-cutter commercial buildings-car lots, shopping centers and office complexes, all of them glowing with what looked like desperation, as if terrified they wouldn’t be noticed. “I’ll tell you one reason,” she finally said. “You remember that thing Eligor’s missing? Well, I’m the one who took it. And I was only safe as long as the Grand Duke thought I had it. And he doesn’t think that anymore.”

I swallowed all of the dozen or so questions that burbled up, picked the one that seemed most germane. “So who does have it?”

“Grasswax did-for a while. But obviously he got rid of it.” She pulled into the Holiday Inn driveway. “And nobody knows where or to whom. Your stop, Dollar.”

I considered walking around to the driver’s side and asking her if maybe we should get a drink and talk about this some more, but as soon as I closed my door she was gone, rolling down the driveway and then pulling out into the flow of lights on Veterans like a fish tossed back alive into a swift river.